


One More Time With Feeling

by revoltrad



Category: Ensemble Stars! (Video Game)
Genre: M/M, Nightmares, affirming feelings, i did not beta read this yet lmk if there are errors ok ok, madara cries, they are adults in this fic and have sorted out most of their family shit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-11
Updated: 2020-04-11
Packaged: 2021-03-02 04:15:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 940
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23598976
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/revoltrad/pseuds/revoltrad
Summary: Madara wakes from a nightmare, and Kanata is there to remind him of what is real.
Relationships: Mikejima Madara/Shinkai Kanata
Comments: 3
Kudos: 34





	One More Time With Feeling

In the darkest hours of the night, Mikejima Madara sits bolt upright in bed, startling Shinkai Kanata awake beside him. A noise tears itself from his throat, desperate and animal. 

“What ‘is’ it?” Kanata asks, urgency in his voice; but Madara does not answer right away. Kanata’s hands search for Madara’s in the dark, but when he finds them pressed against Madara’s cheeks, they come away wet with tears. Kanata’s heart is in his throat, afraid and worried for his boyfriend, his partner, his most precious person. 

“‘Breathe,’ Madara,” he whispers, as Madara’s shoulders shake with sobs. It’s all Kanata can do but to wrap an arm around Madara and wait for the storm to pass. 

“You were---,” Madara chokes out, “ _ drowning. _ ” And ah… He was dreaming about Kanata… He was having a  _ nightmare _ about Kanata. Kanata hums softly, to signal to Madara that he’s here, he’s listening, that Madara isn’t alone with this. “You were--- and the hands, j-just kept pulling me, further and further and---” He cuts himself off, shaking, and Kanata shushes him and rubs his hands open-palm along Madara’s back.

“It is ‘okay,’ Madara,” Kanata says, and marvels at the tension in his partner’s back muscles. “I cannot ‘swim’, but it is ‘okay’ because right now, I am ‘not’ in the water, you know. I am ‘right here’ in front of you.”

Madara shakes his head, clearly trying to reign himself in and failing.    
  
“It felt so r…  _ real _ .”   
  
Ah. Kanata doesn’t know how to argue with that, with  _ feelings _ and  _ what ifs _ and  _ maybes _ . So instead, he drags Madara’s hands away from damp cheeks and replaces them with his own. He swings his hips and leg around so that he’s straddling Madara, and he moves his face so that it’s inches from his partner’s. 

He does not wipe away Madara’s tears with his thumbs, he embraces them. He does not force Madara to hide this raw and ragged part of himself, but instead he accepts it wholly in a way that no one else, not a soul in the universe, can. 

“ ‘This’ is real,” Kanata says simply, and presses his lips to Madara’s forehead. He draws back. “ ‘This’ is real.” He kisses the bridge of his nose, and more tears spill from Madara’s sea blue eyes. Ah, Kanata loves those eyes, has always loved their color, and how they remind him of his home, the sea. Madara is still crying, still upset, and they’re stormy. And yet, he has quieted in a way, marvelling at the serenity of a storm.

“ ‘This’ is real,” and he lifts Madara’s hand to press against his chest, against his beating heart. 

“ ‘This’ is real,” he gestures between himself and Madara, at the heat trapped between them, at the connection that drags them back to each other at the end of every hard and easy day. Madara makes a noise, now, something stuck squarely between  _ embarrassed _ and  _ in love _ . Kanata thinks it might be  _ flustered _ , and he loves when he can do this to Madara. It’s honest, and it’s a thousand shades better than the misery that sloughed off him in waves before, so Kanata pats himself on the back for his well done work and proceeds.

_ “ ‘This’ is real,” _ he whispers against Madara’s lips, and Madara finally, finally speaks.

_ “Please,”  _ he breathes, and Kanata obliges. 

With as forceful and overwhelming as Madara can be, it would be easy to assume he’d be just the same when it comes to Kanata. But no; Kanata is an unrelenting tide against Madara, and Madara is swept away every time. 

Kanata kisses Madara’s lips open until he can taste the salt of dried tears on his tongue, and it’s sweet and simple the way he makes Madara shudder beneath him with a simple swipe against the inside of Madara’s teeth. Kanata draws back only enough to drag his teeth over Madara’s bottom lip in a playful bite. 

“Real,” Madara pants underneath him with swollen lips. And it’s the thought that Madara could still be afraid somewhere in his heart or mind after all this time that makes Kanata press him down into the futon beneath him. Kanata will make him forget, even for just a moment; he will remind Madara that the nightmares of their past can’t hold a candle to the euphoria of their very real present and future.

Some time later, they lay panting beside each other, Kanata tucked up against the curve of Madara’s side. Exhausted and boneless, sweat sparkling in the blue light of the aquarium, Kanata presses feather-light kisses to all the skin his mouth can reach. 

“I love you,” Madara blurts out, like if he doesn’t say them the words will rattle around his ribcage and break something within. Kanata takes pause, stalling his kisses to drag himself up onto his elbows so he can see Madara’s face peering over at him.

“Cheeky ‘rogue’,” Kanata says in a falsely-annoyed tone. “Always trying to ‘say’ important things first, before I get the ‘chance’ to~”

Madara grins, and Kanata feels a surge of emotion at the fact that he brought that smile to his beloved’s face.

“I love you more than ‘anything’, Madara,” Kanata says simply.

“Real?” Madara asks, and it’s only the unbridled happiness in his tone that stops Kanata from grouching at him. Kanata settles back against Madara’s side, drawing the covers up and over them as if to trap their love inside.

“Very real,” he says and means it, and gladly feels Madara’s arm tighten around him. 

Their love is as real as it gets, and neither of them need say anything more on the matter. 

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> if you ask me Very, Very Nicely, i might write the nsfw and add it as another chapter.


End file.
